It certainly has proved the best of times for a Wall Street investment house that has become synonymous for greed. It’s a Wall Street financial institution that has engendered the enmity of many on Main Street. While Goldman Sachs enjoys post melt-down boom times, nearly 500 miles away, the “worst of times” continues for the devastated neighborhood of Slavic Village in Cleveland, Ohio – a community often termed the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis. While Goldman Sachs gleefully paid back TARP money and handed out fat bonuses to publicity-shy senior management, mortgage default figures hit stratospheric heights: one in every 7.5 homeowners with a mortgage is either behind in their payments or in foreclosure; a record figure that equals 13.2% of the entire nations’ home loans. Foreclosure inventories are up a staggering 81% and Fed chief Ben Bernanke admits that the housing and foreclosure crisis will continue – if not actually increase – straight through 2011.

How did we get to this point? What does the future hold for the millions of Main Street homeowners who’ve ended up as collateral damage – the result of Wall Street’s salad days? A Tale Of Two Streets tells this story from these two curbside vantage points.

FEATURED PARTICIPANTS Benjamin R Barber Senior Fellow, DEMOS Author “Consumed” Richard Bennett Former Wall Street Executive Anthony Brancatelli Cleveland City Councilman Gus Chan Photographer, Cleveland Plain Dealer April Charney Jacksonville Legal Aid Lawyer Professor Emanuel Derman Columbia University Professor Kathleen Engel Suffolk University Law School Ann Holden Mortgage Servicing Fraud Activist Gretchen Morgenson New York Times Régis Le Sommier Editor-in-chief, Paris Match Nomi Prins Author, "Other People's Money" James Rokakis Cuyahoga County Treasurer Josh Rosner Graham Fisher & Company Eric Salzman Former Wall Street Executive Bob & Stacy Schmidt Litton Loan Victims Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone Magazine Sandra Whitman EMC Mortgage Servicing Victim Gary Wait Litton Loan Victim

Our two primary storytellers have years of “street” experience. Author Nomi Prins spent her formative years as an investment banker in hallowed institutions like Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs. Having witnessed first-hand the profit-above-all strategies that enriched firms like Goldman Sachs, and seeing little of a trickle down benefit to ordinary citizens, she left in disgust; becoming a vocal critic of her former employers. Nomi’s books, “Other People’s Money,” and “It Takes A Pillage,” have given Nomi an important pulpit to preach the dangers of an unregulated financial services industry.

Cleveland City Councilman Tony Brancatelli spent the last decade watching the rapid deterioration of his hometown’s Slavic Village neighborhood. This rust-belt neighborhood became ground zero as its housing stock became a prime target of sub-prime mortgage brokers eager to provide Wall Street with fodder for securitized mortgage assets. By summer of 2007 the housing bubble exploded with a thunder clap heard round the financial world. Cleveland soon resembled post-Katrina New Orleans, with neighborhoods blighted by abandoned and vacant homes and the city struggling to provide basic services.

In January of 2008 the city of Cleveland decided upon a novel approach. It filed a lawsuit in Federal Court naming Goldman Sachs, along with twenty other banks, as “public nuisances,” for creating the blight that led to decreased property values and plunging city tax collections. The suit sought damages in the hundreds of millions, citing city funds spent demolishing and boarding up abandoned houses. While the court originally dismissed the suit, attorneys representing the city have appealed.

The narrative of A Tale Of Two Streets will juxtapose the rise of Goldman Sachs: from going public in 1999, to its reliance on the new “instruments” created by financial engineering, the explosion of the real estate bubble, the bailout and ensuing public outrage, to the current spate of mea culpas by its current CEO, Lloyd Blankfein. Using Goldman’s own documents – from 1999 to the present – we intend to connect the dots between the rise of what many term a “money machine,” and the absolute devastation caused by its financial policies in places like Slavic Village. With commentary by Wall Street insiders and journalists, including Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Gretchen Morgenson, and Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi, we intend to paint a picture that looks beyond the foreclosure wars that currently rage and examine the “culture” that’s brought us to this point: It’s the old story of greed and avarice; coupled with the lesser known tale of Wall Street money carefully fertilizing the government garden; assuring for those who pull the strings that it will perpetually be the “best of times.”

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